Oman

Muscat: An Algerian man who was raised in Oman has gone missing off the coast of Dubai after a diving trip last Wednesday.

Adel Ait Ghezala, 35, was on a holiday trip to Dubai with his wife, Rana Ghaleb. They had gone spear fishing with some friends, approximately 30km off the coast of Dubai, on January 1.

No clueWhile his friends emerged from the water and boarded the boat following their dive, Adel never surfaced. "They waited for him to come up and he never came out, not till this day. He disappeared without a clue," Barka Al Bakri, a friend of Adel's mother, told the Times of Oman.

Adel was wearing a wet suit, fins and a snorkel, but was not equipped with an oxygen tank. When he didn't emerge from the water, the Emirati coast guard and police were contacted and a search began that afternoon, continuing through Thursday and Friday. Following the diving trip in Dubai, Adel and his wife were supposed to travel to Oman to visit his mother before returning to the US on January 7.

PhD studentAdel grew up in Oman, where he attended ABA. As a child here, he had spent much of his time swimming and diving, Al Bakri said. He was currently living in Washington DC and doing his PhD at American University, she added.

His mother, who is a doctor at the Sultan Qaboos University, went to Dubai to help search for any sign of Adel. His brother Ahmed, who also lives in the US, also flew to Dubai in the hope of finding him.